Category Archives: Videos

{You may choose to simplify the process big-time and do something as easy as pick one person a day from now ’til Christmas and pray for them. It doesn’t need to be time-consuming, stressful, or cost you anything. Do what works for you and enjoy the season with the ones you love!!}

Alternative Activity: Bask in the love of a God who is crazy-in-love with you.

“Your Love Is Extravagant”

Your love is extravagant. Your friendship, it is intimate. I feel like moving to the rhythm of Your grace. Your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place. Your love is extravagant.

Spread wide in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin. No greater love have I ever known. You considered me a friend. Capture my heart again.

Spread wide in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin. No greater love have I ever known; You considered me a friend.

Advent Day #5 – Relive a tradition with your kids (if you have any) that you did when you were a kid OR start a new Christmas tradition that brings happiness and joy.

{You may choose to simplify the process big-time and do something as easy as pick one person a day from now ’til Christmas and pray for them. It doesn’t need to be time-consuming, stressful, or cost you anything. Do what works for you and enjoy the season with the ones you love!!}

Alternate Activity: Be encouraged by the following video entitled, “God’s Got You Covered”!

Ah… it’s FaLL! And although I am always sad to see summer come to an end, there are so many things about this NoStaLgiC time of the year to love. Off the top of my head I’m thinking of pleasant weather; FoOtBaLL games; crisp Saturday mornings; apple dumplings; fall festivals; chili on the 1st cool day; pulling out the blue jeans, sweaters, and boots; and colorful leaves. What’s on your list? Is it taking your kids to a pumpkin patch or ApPLe orchard, making your own homemade apple BuTtEr, attending an alma mater football game, taking a Sunday drive to photograph the colorful leaves, or raking a pile of leaves for your kids {and you} to play in? Why not make a list of your top ten fall FaVoRiTeS and then go ahead and enjoy the season!!

So many aspects of SuMmEr take me back to my growing up years living on a farm – the smell of fresh-cut hay, not to mention those deliciously aromatic fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden; the taste of fresh strawberries, fresh corn on the cob, and ice-cold water from a jug on a hot day; the sound of crickets as you lay in bed at night with the windows open (I grew up in SD where it cooled off a bit at night); and the sight of JoHn DeErE GrEeN (yes, my dad really did think that “nothing runs like a Deer”) as well as beautiful sunsets viewed from the cab of a tractor as I was baling hay. This just barely scratches the surface, as the experiences are too numerous to mention.

So when the You Tube video “I’m Farming and I Grow It” went viral just a few weeks ago by the Petersen brothers (they are almost up to 6 million views), Lara and I were thrilled. (Lara is a farm girl as well, lives on a farm, and her husband farms.) It was icing on the cake that one of the Petersen brothers attends KaNsAs StAtE UniVerSiTy where Lara, her husband Doug, and my husband Scott graduated.

One of the things Lara and I love about the video is that it really portrays life on a farm. That really is what farming looks like!! It took both of us back to growing up on the FaMiLy FaRm. (My family did not have cattle, but Lara’s did.) We even laughed about the way they were dressed (jeans, baseball caps, and t-shirts with the sleeves cut out) as they could have passed for boys working on our familys’ farms.

If you’ve never experienced life on a farm and have wondered what it’s like, here it is. At least the way it was on our familys’ farms. We hope you enjoy it as much as we have!

The movie CoUrAgEoUs has really had an impact on Lara and I. So much so, we are working our way through the book Courageous For Womentogether. (Published by the writers of the movie. You can find a link to the book and movie at the end of this post.) If you have not seen the movie and you asked me to sum it up in one sentence it would be: Have the courage to do the right thing.

Although this movie focuses on fatherhood, having the ChArAcTeR to be courageous applies to all of us.

In what area do you need to step it up? In your parenting? In your marriage? In your thought life? In your diligence on the job? In your faithfulness to others? In your FaiThFuLnEsS to God?

I love this song from the movie and would like to DeDiCaTe it to all the fathers in my life – my dad, my husband, my father-in-law, the men who are like second dad’s to me and most of all, the Greatest Dad ever – who has left the perfect example of what a real Father is – Father God.